


No one

by gabsrambles



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Gen, more clarke focused, not real clexa in this, vague suicide idealization warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 20:23:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6023463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabsrambles/pseuds/gabsrambles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke walks until she realises she´s no one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No one

**Author's Note:**

> This covers the three months Clarke was gone.

**Two Days:**

Sometimes the sky was so blue it hurt, the trees a green that shouldn´t sooth as it did. There were times Clarke wanted to bury herself away from it, throw herself into the ground and sink, because she didn’t deserve it.

Yet even that invigorated her, the soft dirt sinking under her nails.

She didn´t deserve the blue, the shades that crept along the sky, that orange of sunset and sunrise. The stillness of the Earth as the sun sank through another day, not done like the bombs had hoped it would be. The green, the shades echoing years of growth and a depth she never thought she´d see with her own eyes. The whisper of the wind, the breeze playing with tendrils of her hair as if it wanted her to join it. The smell of the Earth after rain fell, the dew that slid along blades of grass and into the dirt next to her body. It was rich and deep and sometimes she could almost taste the life. Her fingers twitched deeper, itching to draw, to paint, to create something with the blinding life that wouldn´t leave her alone.

It was the second day, limbs heavy after camping on the ground outside the front door for forty-eight hours, sleepless, that Clarke set back into Mount Weather.

It seeped into her bones like the dampness had the night before. Footsteps echoed and she didn´t know if it was that she heard or the pounding of her own heart as she walked into a tomb she created.

For the next twelve hours, or what she could tell from the sun, she dragged them out. At first she tried to grip ankles and pull, but skin gave way under her hands, peeling from bone, irradiated and slippery and blistered and everything wrong in the world. It was all it took before Clarke regurgitated the berries she´d made herself force down that morning, the need to eat overriding the self-destruction that tore at her insides, shredding at her muscles. It was not long until she was vomiting bile, the taste like regret thick on her tongue.

In the end, she found a stretcher and dragged them one by one from the dining room. For a second, she wavered, and considered Dante first, but something held her back. Something pulled her towards the room of those a little more innocent than the others, and not the one who went first, who she saw reflecting herself back at her as she pulled the trigger.

There was too much truth in that room.

But when she came to children, to a baby so covered in blisters she couldn´t make out features, her cheeks were wet as she realised the truth was here, too.

That night she curled up again outside, the cold biting at her toes, and rolled in the sensation of what she deserved. When she finally slept, body warring with mind, arms aching with exertion, she saw vacant eyes that still watched her somehow, blisters that popped under her hands as she tried to push the life back in.

Silently, heart pounding in her chest, Clarke bolted upright as the sun crept its way skyward. Streaks of pink were starting on the horizon, a sight almost pretty enough to erase the smell that lingered and she tore her eyes from it. Breathing in deep, they squeezed shut as the smell intensified. That morning, food was too much and she stepped her way back into the mountain with a stomach so empty it was almost a vacuum.

When she finally came to Dante, the last, the only one left to drag out, Clarke paused in the doorway. The room was as she remembered, the lever pulled to the position she left it and on the monitors, she saw nothing. She had emptied the rooms of anything that could haunt her.

But there was Dante.

She squatted slowly, pressing back on her heels and stayed there until her muscles trembled. Rocking slightly, trying to soothe that which can´t be soothed, lips pressed in a hard line, Clarke wanted to crawl out of there, wanted to throw it in and not complete what she set out to do.

In the end, legs tingling, she stood and made herself do it. But nothing could bring her to look down at him, and it was his body on the pile outside that she set alight. There was the stench of gasoline, and Clarke didn´t look up at the sky now smudged with sunset. The fuel caught easily, and for a minute she hung, so close the flames her skin scorched. The urge to fall forward bubbled up so fast it sickened her, relieved her. To walk in and be engulfed, to go up in flame and not live with this rock on her chest, suffocating her with the knowledge of what she did.

The woods darkened behind her and the orange burnt itself beneath her eyelids.

It was that which made her turn away, to walk into the darkness and be engulfed by that, instead.

Clarke walked until her limbs gave way beneath her, until her eyes closed and she fell against something solid, sleep claiming her swiftly.

As did the dreams.

**Day Ten**

Berries were everywhere. The reds and purples were rich against the green and brown and Clarke was able to look at them, now.

For days after she left Mount Weather behind, she slept through the days and trod through the woods at night. It felt right, as if she was where she belonged. A feeling, she realised, she´d never really known.

But one day she woke with the sun high in the sky and colour seeping into her and Clarke couldn´t go back to sleep. Instead she sat and soaked in it, watched the woods move around her, the colours burning into her retinas. It didn´t take long until she heard the footsteps, steady, knowing, clearly a grounder—the sound was soft, not like the heavy footfalls of skaikru. After being alone for so many days, it may as well have been a drum. Clarke had no idea where she was, but she knew she was far from the Arc, far from Mount Weather. As if she could outrun that which haunted her, even as it closed in around her.

She acted on instinct, standing to grasp at the trunk of the tree behind her and haul herself up. It took every careful movement to not make noise, to scrape along the bark. From metres above the ground, she watched them pass, grounders from who knows where, and realised she knew nothing. Nothing about anything.

She knew nothing and she was no one, not here, not anywhere.

The small amount of trigedasleng Clarke picked up over the last few weeks preparing for a war let her know they were looking for someone. But that was all she could understand and she bit her lip in frustration.

Nothing.

The berries stained her hands as she pulled them into her pockets. Her thumb ran over the juice and pieces of flesh in her palm, her stomach turning at the memory of the skin beneath her hand, irradiated and peeling. It was everywhere, that memory, the feeling of it sluicing. She swiped her hand against her leg and the colour didn´t fade.

It was easy then, to grasp at more and squeeze over her hair. Again and again and again. She was sure her forehead was red, her cheeks, too. But it didn´t matter, as long as she managed to do it.

When she found the river, surrounded by greens and reds and browns and colours so rich she could taste them, she could just make out that she was now a red-head. The colours she had been ignoring were now branded over her hair. The colour of blood. Of the blood she´d spilt, of the anger that bit at her and hadn´t left since Lexa turned and left her behind at The Mountain.

Only she wasn´t angry at her. The anger at Dante, at herself, at the actions she took to try to be the good guy overwhelmed everything else.

That betrayal was barely there, anymore.

Her own to herself cut too deep.

**Day 18**

Silence became a constant.

The only one, besides the hunger.

It took longer than it should have, but Clarke finally caught a rabbit in one of the snares she learnt on the Arc and with the sun high overhead she started a fire that was almost smokeless. It took everything in her, all her willpower, to wait until the meat cooked enough to eat, the smell making her salivate.

After so long with fruit, with leaves, with grubs, the meat was almost so rich she threw it up, but with an aching stomach, Clarke stared at the ground and fought with herself. She would not vomit. She could not lose the first meal that filled her up in so long.

Finally, curled close to the fire, she fell asleep in the early afternoon, a rock face protecting her back. It wasn´t long later she woke, her heart pounding and Maya asking her _why_ as her skin seemed to melt, seemed to stream, seemed to disappear and leave behind a mockery of human form. The taste of cooked meat was in her mouth and Clarke only managed to crawl a metre before she lost it all, gagging into the ground.

Spitting once, she felt every hair on the back of her neck stand up.

Someone was watching her.

Swallowing, eyes streaming, Clarke straightened, hands creeping for the knife on her belt as she turned. Her knife wasn´t there.

It was in the hand of the grounder sitting on the other side of the fire, cross legged and eyes sharp on hers.

¨Heya.¨ He said.

He couldn´t have been older than ten years old.

¨Heya.¨ Clarke replied. Her voice was hoarse, like something dragged over gravel. It seemed he spoke so loudly, after weeks without conversation.

She was grateful her trigedasleng could take her that far. There were times it sounded like English to her, easy to pick apart the meaning, and times she was lost in a sea of words she didn´t know.

Her knife span in his hand, his eyes never leaving Clarkes.

He was a child. She could protect herself here.

But she had seen grounders and how they moved, how well they fought. Maybe she couldn’t.

_Nothing._

¨Yu sanch ste ona graun.¨

She cleared her throat. It hurt to speak. ¨I´m on the ground?¨

¨Yu sanch.¨

Then he laughed, loudly, almost a giggle. He mimed eating. ¨Sanch.¨

Her food was on the ground?

Clarke narrowed her eyes.

The grounder kid thought he was funny.

He stood, knife still in hand, and walked around the fire. The steps he took over dry leaves and stones and dirt made no sounds, and even as Clarke crawled backwards a bit, she felt jealousy stab at her stomach.

He held the knife out, blade in his hand, handle offered as if he had nothing to fear from her. Slowly, Clarke reached up to take it. With a grin, he pulled it back just out of her reach, laughed at the look on her face, then handed it to her.

¨Snatch.¨ He held something else out, wrapped in a dirty cloth. Clarke took it, unfolding it, to find some kind of hard bread.

¨For me?¨

He nodded, his teeth flashing white against his dark skin. ¨Choj op.¨

She stared at him and he rolled his eyes, miming eating again. ¨Choj op.¨

With his eyes on her across the fire, Clarke ate, the heavy bread sitting better in her stomach than anything the last two and a half weeks.

At the times she felt more clear-headed, less wrapped up in the things she had done, she wished like anything she had taken a toothbrush.

¨I follow you.¨

The English made her blink and she looked up rapidly.

¨Ai laik Jaustus.¨ He considered her. ¨You no grounder. You skaikru.¨

The was a twist in her chest. ¨I´m not.¨

¨Yu laik Skaikru.¨ He ignored her firm shake of her head, cocking his own to stare at her as if he saw through her. ¨Yu laik Wanheda.¨

The word heda made Clarkes chest twist again. ¨Ai laik…nou heda.¨

He laughed again, his hands gripping his feet where he still sat cross-legged. Clarke wanted to ask him where he came from, why he was alone. Why he followed her.

¨Nou heda. _Wan_ heda.¨

Clarke had no idea what he was talking about. ¨What?¨

He grinned again, teeth even whiter in the twilight that was settling over them.

¨Death.¨ He said. ¨You Commander of Death.¨

 

**Day 34**

The deer in the valley was alone, as most of them were. On the Arc, Clarke learnt that they had been herd animals, usually with kin or children. Down here, after the bombs, there were not enough of them, or something changed, and they were almost always alone.

It was not as deformed as she had been led to believe. When she´d spotted the tracks, one hoof print splayed almost double the others, and Clarke had thought she´d found one that would be a monster. It brought up memories of the first she saw, the first time they´d all seen the result of the radiation.

Back when she was someone.

Jaustus told her they didn´t hunt those that weren´t very deformed. The grounders hoped that the bloodline would win out, the effects would lesson over years of breeding. The sight of the footprint let Clarke know this one was good to hunt. There was nothing wrong with their meat, even if they looked like monsters.

But now, she saw the deer wasn´t as deformed as she´d thought. One leg was doubled, as if in utero it had tried to grow another, and there was a third eye protruding from its left.

Still fine to eat, still fine to hunt.

There were some that had no deformities.

Two slow strides, silent, and the deer didn´t even look up. The thought of Anya, angry at Clarke´s inability to be silent, twisted her stomach.

So many dead.

So many her fault.

So many at her hands.

Knife in hand, Clarke took a breath and aimed. Slow, like Jaustus, a hunter at ten Clarke could never be, had told her. He always laughed at her. She was too fast to act, he told her, thinking of the next step and the next until she forgot the one she needed to take just then. He seemed constantly amused by her.

The knife left her hand with a sharp flick of her wrist soundlessly and struck well, through the eye and dropping the deer after it gave only a simple kick. Jaustus whooped behind her and Clarke turned to see him grinning at her.

¨Yu mafta op ai.¨ She said.

He´d followed her, after she had said she was going alone.

She was still slow, with the language, but Jaustus was patient and since that first day by the fire when he´d lain down and slept without asking, had barely spoken English with her.

She had considered leaving him there. But something had kept her.

He shrugged and claimed he had wanted to see what she had learnt without her turning to him for help.

She rolled her eyes. She barely asked him for help, he pushed it on her. He never told her why he didn´t go back to his village, all he had explained was he had been wandering for years. Apparently, there were people who wandered, the odd few, no real ties to clans, surviving alone or in small groups, using the trading posts.

Turning away, she walked to the deer and pulled out her knife.

¨Yu gonplei ste odon.¨

The blade almost whistled on the grass as she cleaned it, leaving streaks of red and anger bubbled in her chest.

It was always with her, as if trained and conditioned to appear at that colour.

¨Sis ai au,¨ Clarke said, and Jaustus was already there, tugging the deer up to help her carry it.

The meat of this one would feed them for a long time.

**Day 58**

The rain came down in sheets, flashes lighting up the cave and a thunder clap so loud made Clarke sit bold upright, jaw clenched tight. It had been Jasper this time, not Maya, who asked her why. All Maya had done was stare at her with dead eyes, the smell of burnt flesh wafting off her in waves.

Somewhere, in the background, a baby had wailed then screamed, then whimpered. Then nothing.

_Nothing._

Instinctively, she turned to check Jaustus, then remembered he´d left days ago. With his grin and a grip of her wrist, he said he always headed east before the rains got too bad. There had been no request for her to go with him, as if he knew she wouldn´t.

Clarke had no idea what kept her here.

But something did.

She liked to think it was her punishment, to live near the shadow of The Mountain, to hear news of the Skaikru but not get to see them. The thought of seeing them, of seeing Bellamy, Monty, her mother, Raven…

It left a jolt in her, tore her in two. She longed for it, she´d fought for them for so long, her one hundred, then her forty seven. Now she didn´t even know how many of them were left. She´d see them, but not seen them, rather seeing her dreams.

The anger was constant.

And lately, what she woke up from, was not the shock of blisters, of puddles of skin, of fluids leaking from eyes and nostrils and mouths, but what came right on the tail of those images. The flash of eyes, startling bright in the dark, surrounded by blood and kohl, telling her sorry before turning away.

It was the stab of hatred, of blame, of anger that pulled her awake, teeth grinding so hard her jaw ached and heart raced, pumping fury through her veins.

The rain had somehow gotten harder, and it was days like that which Clarke was glad she had left. Out here, there was no responsibility, no one to help, nothing to fix. It was her and survival and thinking of just the next step. Tomorrow was hardly a word to her anymore. There was always somewhere to sleep, something to eat.

People to avoid, the word _Wanheda_ heavy on their tongues as they passed under her perch in a tree.

There were nights she lay awake, thinking of what could have happened. When she felt particularly masochistic, she imagined times when Lexa— _Heda_ , hadn´t been approached by the asshole Emerson and they´d stormed those doors together. Side by side, their people flooding behind and around them as they fought their way through and freed their captured together. Met Octavia, bloodied and a warrior, and Indra, tall and proud, and Bellamy, steady and sure and saved them all. Afterwards, there would have been celebrating. The Mountain would have fallen. Maybe they would have executed prisoners or war, the leaders, Dante—that name always brought a sick feeling in her stomach—and Cage. They could have organised actual donation, got them on the ground.

Fought for _peace_.

Maybe they´d be in Polis, listening to the drums, seeing dancing she´d heard rumours of. That beat could crawl its way into her body and maybe, she´d feel ready. _Not yet_ no longer a word on her tongue.

But they are not there. Instead three hundred and forty one people are dead from The Mountain alone.

Children.

Those are the nights Clarke goes to sleep with the feeling of the lever under her aplm. She couldn´t feel Bellamy´s over it.

Just hers.

Betrayal sat heavy on Clarke, her blanket.

**Day 79**

The trading post Clarke had taken to frequenting was on the outskirts, far from the bustling villages, the bigger settlements. Far from where people usually looked for her. There was a bounty on her head, that she knew.

There was power they thought ran through her veins and Clarke had never heard anything so absurd.

There was not power in her blood, in her death.

There was only weakness there, because as much as she tried not to Clarke wandered this land feeling _everything_ , especially hatred.

She was trying to focus, and think with her head, because one day she wanted to get her revenge.

Niylah had a soft voice and softer hands. Sometimes, when Clark spoke with her, her voice still struggling over the vowels of the language, she saw amusement tug at her eyes and there was something there that reminded her of someone else she couldn´t place. The man who ran the trading post hated Clarke, he knew who she was and wasn´t the type to turn her in, but didn´t like how Clarke looked at Niylah and the danger he saw.

There were times she stood silently, watching from shadows of trees, until he left to go in and take her latest kill. Niylah was one of the only people Clarke spoke to, and she stayed longer than she should each time before she´d walk out and disappear into the woods.

She´d allow herself a few moments, some contact, before the urge to run overtook her.

Clarke was almost untraceable. She had learnt to tread through the forest and leave no tracks. When worried, she walked through rivers and jumped over rocks where no tracks _could_ be left even if she did. Her fires were almost smokeless, she never made the same trips, walked the same paths, slept in the same places.

If she needed things Niylah and her father couldn´t provide, Clarke entered villages far from most others, where people barely knew of Wanheda or Clarke or Skaikru, except as things of legends. Somehow, her stained hair worked and Clarke wondered, at times, how much her face had changed.

There, in those places, she became no one.

Reflections were not something sought.

She didn´t need them to know, not anymore.

She felt it, inside, nestled deep in her chest.

She carried it every day, the knowledge of who she now was.

It wasn´t often the longing for her people rose up like before, because her people didn´t feel like hers anymore. She didn´t feel like she belonged to them.

There were times she doubted they´d even recognise her, anymore.

**Day 92**

The ground under Clarke´s knees was so hard it hurt, but she sank into it, settled down, let it pain her. From what she knew of Ice Nation, this was only the beginning, and maybe if she embraced it, she could stop herself from giving the Queen the satisfaction of hearing her scream.

If she could, she´d remember the feeling of being touched the night before with a gentleness that felt like it had been going to break her, to shatter her apart from the inside until Clarke had begged for harder, for nails, for teeth because she couldn´t handle the softness. The whisper of touch, the comfort it gave. Her chest had fought against it, her mind had rebelled because she wasn´t worthy.

The scream that had torn from her throat had surprised even her, but not as much as the desperate whimper had.

Clarke would think of that.

Of hands and tongues and eyes and skin.

Not of the blade and fire and death to come.

Her lungs were burning for air, Roan hadn´t stopped for hours, hadn´t let her rest. Clarke was true to her word, because it was all she had and she refused to become _her_ completely, and didn´t fight him again.

Bellamy had come for her, had fought for her. Her people, perhaps, were still her people and it was with that thought and the memory of the night before that Clarke would die with.

_Death wasn´t the end._

And, apparently, with _that_ voice in her head.

People were speaking Trigedasleng but the sack on her head muffled it and when it was pulled off the light blinded Clarke, made her wince, reminding her of those first few days in which she´d avoided it. As she got her sight back she had to wonder if she was delirious. 

It was _her._

They spoke over her, but it could have been in a tongue Clarke had never heard before for all she knew because all she could hear was a rushing in her ears. The way her heart pounded in her chest made her feel like vomiting. Her blood boiled, seethed.

She spat.

She went wild.

She fought the arms that pulled her back because the woman that had made her _this_ made her someone Clarke didn´t know, didn´t recognise, didn´t _like_ needed her and nothing made Clarke angrier.

She would bring Hell. She would bring Death.

She was the Commander of it, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> _I tumble[here](http://gabs-88.tumblr.com/), feel free to stop by and ramble at me, ask questions, say hi or whatever._


End file.
